Krasnodar, 20 June – Yug Times. Flows of holidaymakers are heading for the Kuban seaside – a beach season has begun. It will be peculiar this year: for the first time since the 2014 Winter Olympics, thousands of foreigners will be coming to Kuban, again owing to sports – this time football.
Unlike other Russian holidaymakers, Kuban residents prefer foreign beaches, notes Anastasia Lykova of CTJ Travel. Turkey is their most popular destination, followed by Greece and Cyprus (however, this year it has become more difficult to get a Greek visa, and Cyprus is by 40% more expensive than Turkey).
But Kuban doesn’t want to give up and yield to the overseas beaches. Last year, it received 16 million holidaymakers, including 10 million in summer.
It was a record figure for the region – but the plans for this year are even more ambitious: 16.2 million tourists. Whether these expectations justify, we will know later – though currently there are all preconditions to reach this figure. Let’s take just the World Cup: 130,000 foreign fans will come to Sochi during the event.
Although there were some fears that the newly-opened Crimean bridge will negatively affect the number of holidaymakers coming to Kuban, the heads of the two regions are optimistic about their future and look forward to cooperation that will turn rivals into partners.
“The Crimean bridge will make South Russia a single large resort,” says Kuban Governor Veniamin Kondratiev. “Altogether we are receiving over 21 million tourists a year, and the figure will be growing.”
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